i wonder how many
degrees of separation i am
from the northern lights
NOTES
Every day for the past few months at Fálki’s Might Networks site, I’ve seen a creative prompt she’s posted. To be fair, I think the prompts are too specific, but it’s her site, not mine, and she can do as she pleased. In any case, as a theatrical improviser, I do what I do during a show, and take the her prompt simply as inspiration, not as a literal request to, for example, do a show about “[insert prompt here]” or, in this case, write a poem about “[insert prompt here]”.
However, on this particular day, the prompt Fálki posted was “northern lights”, and, as we were living in one of the more northern parts of the USA, and thus able to at times see the northern lights — which I’ve still never seen, because I apparently enjoy warmth and sleep more than a chance to observe one of Nature’s wonders — I chose to muse about the fact that I had not seen them.
I should say that the very first thing that crossed my mind upon reading the prompt was Neil Young’s song “Pocahontas”, in which he mentions aurora borealis. The haiku that occurred to me was:
like Neil Young
i wonder whether Pocahontas ever saw
the northern lights
I liked the concept, but was not fond of that as a haiku, and I’ll not explain why, because as soon as I do, I’ll find a dozen other haiku that also fit that criterion that I am fond of. Ultimately, I looked up the song’s lyric and found that Mr. Young did not, in fact, wonder whether Pocahontas had ever seen the northern lights, so my premise was moot, and I moved on.